Cardiovascular disease in chronic kidney disease: risk factors, pathogenesis, and prevention.

Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) experience serious adverse cardiovascular (CV) consequences. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with CKD, being secondary not only to an increased prevalence of traditional CV risk factors, but also to the presence of a wide array of nontraditional risk factors unique to patients with CKD. Pathogenesis includes both functional and structural alterations in the CV system. Those alterations give rise to a wide range of clinical CV syndromes, including ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and sudden cardiac arrest. As an increasingly prevalent disease, CKD, together with consequent CV disease, imparts major health and economic burdens to the community. In this review, we discuss traditional and nontraditional risk factors for CV disease, the pathogenesis of CV clinical syndromes, and prevention of CV syndromes in patients with CKD.